Dreamboat rose to his feet. “She’s just being nice, Georgie.” He squeezed Georgia’s shoulder as he walked past her. Georgia’s eyes softened and her hand went immediately to the place he’d just touched. When Kandace moved her gaze to the other boy, he was watching Georgia as well, only his expression was sad, sullen, as though he’d noticed her reaction to Dreamboat and it caused him a measure of heartbreak.
Huh. Interesting. There was a little love triangle going on down here. A soap opera playing out between three abandoned teens in the basement beneath Lilith House. Oh, the pitiful angst. Especially considering love triangles never ended well.
“You really shouldn’t have risked coming down here again,” the kid said, leading her out of the room.
“I was concerned about you.”
He looked briefly confused, as though he didn’t know what to make of the idea that anyone would be concerned about them.
They walked to the back of the basement, turning where she remembered the hidden door was.
He began to reach for it. “Can I ask you a question?” she said.
He paused, his hand dropping momentarily. “Sure,” he answered warily.
“Do you have any idea who your mothers were? Their names? Anything?”
He shook his head just as noise sounded from upstairs. Footsteps, voices. Damn. It sounded like the girls were heading back into the school to return to class. If she hurried up the ladder in the wall, came out in that empty corner on the top floor, she just might make it back down again in time. The kid pulled the hidden door open and Kandace crawled inside.
She turned back to him. “Hey, Dreamboat, that girl, Georgia, is she trustworthy?”
The boy paused, but then nodded. “She’ll do what I tell her to do. She won’t say a word about you.”
Kandace recalled the way she’d looked after he’d touched her so briefly. Yeah, Kandace could believe she’d do whatever this little dreamboat told her to do. She started to climb but then paused again. If she was going to find out more about these three, she needed to know as much about them as possible.
She had a feeling they were the key to bringing this place down.
She’d enjoyed the blush on his face every time she teased him with the nickname, but it wouldn’t be enough if she hoped to uncover more information. “What’s your real name, Dreamboat?”
His eyes moved away and then back. “Camden.”
“Camden what?”
He shook his head, eyes lowering. “Just Camden.”
Then he shut the door behind her and she heard him walking away.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Camden knocked loudly on the front door, hoping his own pounding could be heard over the steady bang of hammers from within. After a few minutes of no answer, he tried the door, leaning inside. “Hello?” he called, stepping into the foyer of Lilith House.
A handyman who often worked for Mason stepped around the corner, gripping a crowbar in his hand. “Hey, Cam.”
“Hey, Kenneth. I’m looking for Ms. Lattimore.”
The man pulled a bandana out of his back pocket and wiped the perspiration off his forehead. “She left about an hour ago. Asked if there were any bodies of water nearby. I heard Mason mention Hermosa Creek.”
“With her daughter?”
“I think the daughter’s with her sitter in town.”
“Is Mason still here?” he asked. He hadn’t seen his truck out front, but maybe he’d ridden with one of his team.
“Nah. He left right after Ms. Lattimore.”
Camden pressed his lips together, that disquiet that had been his constant companion since they’d fought in Mason’s office the week before gripping him tightly.
“Thanks, Kenneth.”
Kenneth gave him a small salute and Camden exited the house, heading for the path that led to the shallow creek about a quarter mile from the house. Hell, at this time of year, it might not just be shallow, it may have dried up completely. But if she hadn’t returned to the house yet, maybe she’d found something worth lingering for.
She’s not your responsibility, yet here you are. He’d promised himself he’d stop checking on her. And he would.
He swore beneath his breath, even while his feet kept moving down the dusty, dirt road that his young legs had traveled so many times when it’d been safe for him to sneak away for an hour or two.
He’d heard it said that some roads steal your time, some steal your comfort, and some steal your heart. Where had he read it? He couldn’t remember, but it had stayed with him the way quotes sometimes do. He’d thought of it that first day he’d made the winding drive that led back to Lilith House. He’d pondered on the question of what else the road that took him back to the place of his birth could possibly steal from him when it’d already taken those things. Nothing, he’d thought. There’s nothing more Lilith House can take from you. Now it was his turn to retrieve what he could. Until the other night, it had been thirteen years since he’d been in that basement. And the darkness . . . the damp smell . . . the familiar creaks of the house . . . it brought back too many memories. Conjured up the echoes of the screams from above, ones he could do nothing about. Strengthened his resolve to own those ghosts . . . that pain.
As he moved quietly through the forest, he heard the soft trickle of water up ahead. It drew him as that same sound drew all creatures, great and small. Life. He could smell the clean sweetness of it before it even met his eyes.
When he stepped through the trees, he stopped short, his ribcage tightening and his breath falling short. There she was, her skirt drawn up her legs, her feet submerged in the clear, shallow stream, her hands behind her on the ground and her face tilted toward the sun.
Something wild and ancient inside him responded. He didn’t know exactly what it was. Instinct? Some primal law of attraction? Whatever it was, it was simply part of nature’s order. Cam had studied math and English and science—Ms. West, the woman who’d eventually shared her name, had been an excellent tutor—but he’d also made nature part of his education by spending every second he could in the woods beyond the school, the only place where his soul felt truly free. The only place he’d ever felt he mattered. Not to any one person, but maybe just to some . . . system, or plan that was bigger—loftier—than the small world he’d been relegated to for his whole life up to that point.
What are you thinking?
I was thinking that I like that idea . . . that everyone who’s here is here to serve a purpose.
Their conversation came back to him. She’d put into words the things he’d felt—yearned so desperately to believe about himself—when speaking about her daughter, and it’d filled him with a wild hope, lit a small fire in his belly. It’d also caused turmoil, uncertainty, because it didn’t align with his well-laid plans. It went in opposition.
He drank her in, his eyes moving over the feminine lines of her body, her profile lifted to the sky. He’d meant what he said to Scarlett about the nestling—though he was pretty sure she knew as well as he did that he’d also been referring to himself—those primal responses determined by nature could not be avoided, nor changed. They simply were. That part he couldn’t fight, even if he tried.